Panasonic is bringing Freeview HD boxes to Britain later this year: two Blu-ray Disc recorders that can also tune into the expanding terrestrial TV service.
The Japanese giant showed off the boxes at an event held in Munich this week. The two models are the DMR-BW880 and the DMR-BW870, which incorporate 500GB and 250GB of hard …

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Hope the UI sucks less bad than their freeview HDD/DVD toys

I have one of their freeview HDD/DVD boxes and the UI sucks. Off the top of my head

* 30s startup time

* wont play region 1 DVDs while you have the recorder set up to record anything to the HDD. I think this is meant to stop you mixing R1 and R2 content on the same disk, but its just silly when you are recording to HDD and watching DVD.

* Lots of other quirks that always make me feel like I'm being told off

Feature set may be good, but when you compare the UI to the Wii iPlayer, the wii is in a different league.

If you are going to get one of these toys, test it out in a shop first.

Record to SD for mobile watching please (in reduced resolution, of course!)

An extra feature to record any broadcast to SD (or a microSD in a full-size adapter) auto-converted (if necessary) to MPEG4/H264, in a selection of reduced resolutions (e.g. 640x480 or 640x360 for widescreen) in MPEG4 would make it possible to watch programmes on a mobile during a train commute.

This would make a convenient, PC-less solution for watching recorded TV on the move.

Most recent to latest smartphones could handle such MPEG4 H264 playback, whereas the older MPEG2 was not possible (as explained here: http://ideas.symbian.org/Idea/View?ideaid=5182 )

great, but....

Pana$onic

£1000+ I bet

Poor UI, good integration with other Panny products.

Wait unitl 2011 when there is a lot more choice or you'll regret the hughe amount of money they will demand. When Samsung, LG and others produce competitive products, the prices will drop dramatically - I reckon by 2011 as we'll miss the boat for the 2010 World Cup.

rubbish...

since almost all HD content will be crippled with DRM i guess the only point in the BR recorder is to burn AVCHD content to BR. and how much will this extra facility actually cost? a damn site more than a BR writer for pc i guess. seems a ripoff to me.

of course if HD content ISNT crippled then they might be worth getting. i will just stick with my pioneer 320 and V+ box.

Mythical Solutions

Standalone DVRs

Seeing this article reminds me of the fact that here in the US standalone DVD/HDD recorders are a dying - if not dead - breed; if you want to record off the telly, you either need a box tied to your satellite/cable provider, or, if you've got even more money to burn, a tuner-equipped PC under your TV.

I miss my LG HDD recorder that i had in the UK. Once I'd paid for it, that was it, no subscriptions Why are these available in the UK but not in the States? Are content providers afraid we're all going to record to HDD and rip it off? Our Dish Network DVR is great, but HD recordings self-destruct after a month or so.